But the devil is in the details again.
1) how would the US realistically expect to build up enough forces in the region to risk open conflict without China noticing and deploying counter forces?
For the US to try openly attacking Chinese assets and forces would require at least 3 carrier battle groups it not more.
Any fewer and they risk getting instantly overwhelmed and obliterated by the inevitable Chinese counter strike to any US surprise attack.
If the US did assemble 3+ CSGs in the SCS, half the PLAN would also be deployed in the SCS to monitor them, with all PLAAF strike wings on high alert.
Any such gathering of force and corresponding political tension would also likely trigger Chinese forward deployment scenarios where sufficient air and missile forces are forward deployed to the islands to make them fully capable of defending themselves and hitting back at attackers.
It wouldn’t be a surprise attack but a full on pitched battle.
2) even if for the sake of argument we say the US somehow managed to pull off complete surprise and hit the islands in a surprise attack and then rushed past to form an effective blockade of the islands.
That would mean the USN will have to give up its biggest asset of mobility.
If they move out of the area, the Chinese would be able to reinforce and forward deploy forces on those islands.
So the USN is stuck guarding those islands, which they will have to keep bombing, since they are essentially giant construction sites with more than enough materials and machinery and trained workers to quickly repair any damage their bombing will do to key infrastructure.
That means the Chinese will know where the USN will be, and can just send waves after waves of missiles at them from standoff range. It will be little different from them having actually occupied the islands.
3) even if the USN can withstand that kind of attack, what is the end game? Those islands are not going anywhere, and the Chinese workers there can live off the sea to a large extent.
The Chinese can and will turn the conflict into one of attrition, with China having by far the shorter logistical chain. Able to maintain attacks pretty much indefinitely.
Even if we assume 100% intercept rates, it won’t be long before the USN fleet stands running out of missiles.
The USN would need to pretty much entirely deploy to this conflict to have 3 carriers on station at all times going by the 3s rule.
Even if we take the extremely silly position that no USN ships gets lost in all that saturation missile attack, just how long could the US sustain that kind of long range deployment and extreme munitions expenditure?
1: I think this is the most valid reason for why such an outcome is unlikely, because if the USN does deploy 3 CSGs or an equivalent into the westpac near the SCS, China will likely have their forces on high alert too, and it would likely have been preceded by months of strategic tension if not tip offs from intelligence services that an attack was likely. So I find it very unlikely for China to be caught with their pants down.
2: "mobility" is relative imo. The USN forces that will be deployed in the SCS will technically be "fixed" within that theatre in a strategic sense, but the ships themselves will of course be very much mobile tactically and operationally speaking. Of course, the sheer fact that the USN ships will be in the SCS does confer certain ISR advantages to the Chinese side for their strike goals, but otoh deploying in the SCS also gives the USN side a much superior strike capability in terms of payload/range/sortie rate equivalent against Chinese targets on the mainland, compared to if they were operating outside of the first island chain.
The difference between such a situation and a situation where Chinese forces were able to hold and reinforce the islands and keep the USN multiple hundreds of km away from Chinese shores, imo is very significant.
3: regarding the islands, I expect the US goal would not be to use them as air bases, but rather to destroy their purpose as listening posts, to rip up the air strips, and to occupy the islands with a small force of infantry while holding sea control with naval and air superiority in the SCS overall.
As for what the overall strategic or political goal of such a conflict may be, we could come up with any number of scenarios depending on how aggressive we want to dial each side's intentions to and how competent each side is, which obviously goes for any discussion of a hypothetical conflict scenario between China and the US. The biggest deterrence China has against low level conflict scenarios is that every side knows a low level conflict can quickly snowball into a larger all out war where the political and strategic goals of both sides is likely to be unattainable.
The purpose of my example was not to say that such an eventuality is likely, but rather that the islands themselves are very much vulnerable to certain strategic scenarios and will likely remain so in the foreseeable future until the Chinese air and naval forces become larger and more capable and more able to project a constant, high level presence in the SCS 24/7.
